True liberty does not currently exist. Reclaim it through education and civil disobedience!

True liberty does not currently exist. Reclaim it through education and civil disobedience!

Education for the Masses

Education is one of those subjects for which everyone seems to have their minds made up and no amount of evidence to the contrary will suffice to change it. While it is true that I am not an “official” teacher as per state and federal guidelines, I have taken a number of courses in instruction and have been in real world situations where I was required to teach. Let me say right off the bat that it does not take a four-year degree to be able to teach. The requirement for a teacher to possess a four-year degree in addition to a state issued certificate is simply a means to limit the number of possible teachers.

Of course, I would never want you to simply take my word for it. Instead, go to your local library and check out any of a number of excellent books by John Taylor Gatto. John was awarded the honor of New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 and was the New York City Teacher of the Year on three separate occasions. This man knows a thing or two about teaching and I am sure he would agree with me on a thing or two.

To put it simply, the government mandated public school system is an abysmal excuse for education. Sure, some people get a decent education in the smaller rural schools but by and large the public schools fail to provide a passing education to its pupils. Statistics are bloody evil things which – if you’ve ever taken a statistics course you can affirm this – can be used to defend whichever stance you wish. So rather than spout off useless numbers I can only ask a person to do their own research with an open mind. The fact is, public education today has morphed into an instrument used to propagandize and imprison the youth.

Rather than allow a child to explore the mysteries and challenges of life in a natural and enjoyable manner, standardized public education has become to symbolize twelve years of hell for a child. Ask any middle or high schooler if they can’t wait for their twelve years in prison to come to an end and you will hear a resounding YES! School is where a student learns to lie, cheat, mimic, and resent those superior to himself. For those in the top few percentages it is a place to learn boredom and where they discover their natural curiosity and desire to excel get trampled on. Rather than allow a student to learn those things he is interested in, standardized schools force him to sit in boredom to lecture after lecture for hours on end. Even coming home he has no escape because he has been assigned additional work to be completed at home.

There becomes a natural delineation between learning and life. Where in reality a child learns every waking minute of the day, the government run schools draw a line in a child’s life which essentially forces him to separate learning from life. Even after finally obtaining permission to “graduate” from school and enter life, most students do not possess any specific or measurable real world skills necessary to succeed in life. And if one or two actually does possess these skills, they likely did not learn them from school.

A brief look through the pages of history at some of the more successful men in history gives us a good idea that formal schooling matters little for achievement. Drive, determination, creativity, and persistence are the real skills necessary for success in life. The following is but a short list of a few of the more famous individuals who did not complete formal education:

These are/were highly successful men who did not complete, or even attend in some cases, “formal” education.

In sum, primary education is a joke which does nothing to prepare our children for the real world and steals much of their innocence and joy of life. Since they are not allowed to be children in primary school, colleges have been turned into one massive party to catch up on lost time. This in turn has dumbed down our colleges (in addition to the artificial government push to send people to college for no logical reason) and we are left with meaningless degrees which give us no benefit in society.

I apologize for the rough nature of this post. It is late and I am pushing the deadline for today’s post. I have a nice long weekend planned with my wonderfully understanding wife for our anniversary this weekend and don’t plan to post again until mid-week. This topic will come up again in the future.